Try as hard as he will, no designer can get away from the fact that the cheapest arrangement of rooms in his small-house plan makes a square unit and builds a square block house, but that such a plan is one of the most difficult forms to make pleasing to the eye. For this reason the room arrangement, which gives a rectangular-shaped house, is more often adopted. But we often tire of too much repetition of the rectangular house, and designers try to vary it a little. There is not much leeway here, however. By adding a wing at right angles to the main rectangle of the house, we can have an L-shaped plan which is easier to give architectural variety to, but very uneconomical, for the number of linear feet of exterior wall for a house of this shape is just as great as that for a house which is a rectangle in plan, as long as the L and as wide. This also holds true of the U-shaped plan and the T-shaped plan and the combination of the T and the L shaped plans. In fact, as soon as the designer tries to get away from the simplest rectangular shapes in the small house, the economic reins pull him back, and he must go slow in selecting too picturesque plans. Limited, therefore, in his possible scope, the real work of the designer should be one of perfecting the acceptable solutions which have been already worked out. Only once in a generation are absolutely new arrangements stumbled on. [Illustration: GAMBREL GABLE] [Illustration: WALL GABLE HIP ROOF FLAT ROOF] On top of these various-shaped blocks, which these plans will form, a roof must be erected. Here again one would think that the architectural motifs would be quite varied, and yet when the matter is studied it is not the case. There are only five fundamental shapes of roofs which can be placed upon these blocks, and two of these types are really the same, and another ought not to be employed, so that, after all, there are actually only three fundamental roof motifs to use. These are the gable roof, the gambrel roof, and the hip roof. The wall-gable roof is merely a type of end treatment for the gable roof, and the flat roof is not suited to the average small house in the country or suburbs, because of traditions. [Illustration: A B These two houses are ugly as sin, yet are considered very practical. All rooms on 2nd floor are square and cellars are high and dry.] [Illustration: C This house is considered impractical, because rooms on 2ⁿᵈ floor are not square and are lighted with dormers, and the cellar is low and partly omitted. But architecturally something can be said of it.]